Keysight Technologies has introduced a radar scene emulator which it states enables automobile manufacturers to lab test complex, real-world driving scenarios, accelerating the overall speed of test.
The emulator combines hundreds of miniature radio frequency (RF) front ends into a scalable emulation screen representing up to 512 objects at distances as close as 1.5m.
The company posits that full-scene emulation in the lab is critical to developing the robust radar sensors and algorithms needed to realize advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS)/autonomous driving (AD) capabilities.
Using full scene rendering that emulates near and far targets across a wide continuous field of view (FOV), the emulator enables customers to rapidly test automotive radar sensors integrated in autonomous drive systems with highly complex multi-target scenes.
This allows radar sensors to see more with a wider, continuous FOV and supports both near and far targets, which eliminates the gaps in a radar’s vision and enables improved training of algorithms to detect and differentiate multiple objects in dense, complex scenes. As a result, autonomous vehicle decisions can be made based on the complete picture, not just what the test equipment sees.
Keysight states that testing radar sensors against a limited number of targets provides an incomplete view of driving scenarios and masks the complexity of the real world. Keysight notes that being able to emulate real-world driving scenes in the lab with variations of traffic density, speed, distance and total number of targets means that testing can be completed early for common to corner case scenes, while minimizing risk.
“Keysight’s radar scene emulator offers automotive OEMs a breakthrough solution that will bring the road to the lab through full scene rendering,” said Thomas Goetzl, vice president and general manager for Keysight’s Automotive an Energy Solutions business unit. “The vision of fully autonomous vehicles is rapidly approaching, and we’re thrilled to be accelerating this vision into a reality.”
Goetzl also noted that the emulator has the potential to be used in a wider hardware-in-the-loop testing setup, bringing in cameras and other elements to test complex ADAS sensor suites.
